Friday, July 31, 2009

Here's what I like about John Carroll and the Weird City Theatre Company: they have a sense of fun that's irreverent and modern, but they take their drama seriously.

Necessarily low-rent but not sloppy, the company performs with energy, confidence, and an appreciation for the text, whatever it might be. They have a taste for pop -- we've seen an adaptation of Night of the Living Dead, a faithful production of William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes, and around Halloween we'll get their take on Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau's 1921 unathorized film version of Dracula.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals from 1775 is pop of a different sort. Sheridan, born into a theatrical family and married for love. The success at Covent Garden of this, his first play, spurred him to buy out Garrick's Drury Lane and subsequently to run successfully for Parliament. It's a comedy of manners in which Jack, an artistocratic military officer, disguises his well born origins in order to court Miss Lydia Languish, a dizzy heiress beguiled by popular novels and intent on forfeiting her ample trust fund by marrying poor, for love.

Journey into a chillingly plausible future of artificial intelligence and human cloning in Karel Capek’s prophetic 1920’s play, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Capek’s play introduced the term “robot” into the English language. Summer Youth Theatre brings this treasure of modern drama to life in a stylish new production, directed by Gabriel Maldonado.

The Austin Chronicle lauds VORTEX’s Summer Youth Theatre (SYT) as “The Best Theatre for Kids That Treats Kids Like Grownups”. Now in its 18th year, SYT has mentored hundreds of Central Texas students, teaming them with adult professionals to create many award-winning productions of great world literature including Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, The Visit, Vitriol and Violets: Tales from the Algonquin Round Table, Machinal, The Frogs, and Moby Dick.

Reserve your FREE tickets now to see Steel Magnolias in FBC's Blackbox Theater! Written by Robert Harling but based on the true story of a small town, Steel Magnolias is a heart-warming play full of laughter tears and great eighties hair-dos!

Shows are almost completely sold out so we've added a Thursday night performance Aug. 6th! Call 476-2625 or 913-7636 to reserve your tickets for July 31, Aug 1, 6, 7, 8 at 8pm or Sundays Aug 2, 9 at 2:30pm!

August 7 - 30Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.207 West 18th Street, Austin, at the corner of 18th and Lavaca, catercorner from the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum.As You Like It follows its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution in her uncle's court to find safety and eventually love in the Forest of Arden with her cousin Celia, court jester Touchstone, and many other love-sick characters. Charades and disguise lead to all manner of frolics in the forest, with the lively plot ultimately resulting in a “happily ever after“ finale.

Tickets: Friday and Saturday $12 in advance (online or at Box Office) and $15 at the doortickets online

As You Like It is brought to you by the same team behind last year's sparkling Twelfth Night. Director Beth Burns, fresh from the run of her own play The Long Now, returns to direct Shakespeare's pastoral masterpiece, with the help of music director and composer Michael McKelvey, and some of Austin's most accomplished classical actors.Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

With David Mamet's name on the playbill, one expects edgy situations and sharp language, but this production of A Life in the Theatre was one of gentle comedy and smooth edges.

It's a two-man show in which we see two male actors in an unnamed fifth-rate theatrical company sharing a dressing room. Michael Stuart is the mature actor and Zeb West is the newcomer. Mamet gives us vignettes of them over the stretch of a season or so, sketching out their initial, stiffly polite contacts and showing the development of a relationship. The notion is that the stodgy, opinionated old-school actor is going to be eclipsed by the up-and-coming future rival. The implied question is whether there will be a passing of the torch or an arm wrestling contest for it.

which runs August 13th-29th at Hyde Park Theatre. This collaborative original work conceived by Mark Pickell and Carrie Klypchak examines the people who love Wal-Mart and the people who love to hate Walmart. The show is being launched just in time to celebrate Northcross Mall’s conversion into an “upscale” two story Pantheon of 24-hour consumerism. :(

Francis Ya-Chu Cowhig talks to the Daily TexanAnderson Rodriguez about the $50,000 Keene prize from the Michener Center for her play Lidless and about another work in progress:

Cowhig: I am always working and thinking about multiple projects. I write best when I am able to go hard and deep into one project for a few months, then put it away for a couple months while I work on something else, and then go back to the first project with fresh eyes. This is how it has been with “LIDLESS.” For the past three weeks, I have been developing a different play, “410[GONE]” at PlayPenn in Philadelphia.

[“410[GONE]” was produced at UT last fall], and just today, I flew from Philadelphia to Houston, where I am at the Alley Theatre working on “LIDLESS” as a part of their New Plays Initiative.

Daily Texan: What was it like for “LIDLESS” to be such a success so soon after you finished your Michener Center fellowship? Is it daunting to set the bar so high early on?

Cowhig: The script of “LIDLESS” has had success in competitions. This does not mean it is a successful play. Plays are written for audiences, not for literary committees. The success of the play will be determined by the audiences that view it once it has the opportunity for professional productions.

Who said a recession couldn’t be funny?August 13-30 Thursday- Saturday 8pm and Sunday 3pmSalvage Vanguard Theatre • 2803 Manor Road • Austin, Texas 78722 Tickets: $16/$13 students/seniors $2 off if you bring a can food donation for Capital Area Food BankThursday is “pay what you can” night Ticket information from AusTIX 474-8497 or online at www.nowplayingaustin.com/austix

Teatro Vivo’s bilingual comedy offers a farcical look at a community facing a food shortage during a difficult economic time. Dario Fo’s ¡No Se Paga! We Won’t Pay! takes a look into the lives of two couples struggling between good and starvation. When prices become too high for life’s necessities, whom is to blame? Who is to suffer? And who are to take matters into their own hands?

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Ryan Manning provided a lot of the energy for the Austin Community College Experimental Student Performance Lab. This summer 2009 enterprise put on four pieces, all student-written and student-directed, all performed by ACC students. Manning wrote three of them and performed in three. Whatever ESPL show was up there, Manning was part of it, somehow.

Austin Community College students can whoop it up as well as anyone, and the intimate Gallery Theatre on the third floor of the Rio Grande campus was a fine place to do so. Think of every space opera you've ever seen, from Star Wars to Star Trek to Battlestar Galactica, put them in a blender and dress up your actors with intentionally campy outfits and attitudes. That was The Men from Mars. We whooped right along with them in the electronic music as those creepy Martians with stockings over their faces came attacking our noble troops, who were Good Guy Macho stereotypes from every war movie you've ever seen. Read more and view images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Sundays at 8pm, August 2nd – 23rdThe United States Art Authority at The Spider House2906 Fruth StreetTickets: $10.Performance Dates: August 2, 9, 16, 23Click to purchase ticketsEveryone remembers the 1990’s Saturday morning television show “Saved By the Bell” for its ridiculously delivered messages, over-the-top characters, and comedic dialogue that only a laugh track could love. The stars of the show went on to suck in such equally unimpressive projects as Showgirls, Beverly Hills 90210 and the worst season of NYPD Blue ever! Clearly it’s a body of work lacking the merit that would deserve homage.

This is why The Institution Theatre feels that there is no better source material than Saved By The Bell for a full blown stage production with all the characters, dialogue, joy, laughter and life lessons completely and accurately in tact.

NARNIA…a land frozen in eternal winter…a country waiting to be set free.This wonderful adaptation based on the children’s novel by C. S. Lewis is the story of four children, Susan, Lucy, Edmond and Peter who escape the London blitz of World War II, when they are sent to live with their uncle in the countryside. Lucy’s discovery of a magic wardrobe in her uncle’s home, leads her and her siblings into a world where “it is always winter, but never Christmas”, the land known as Narnia.

Here the children discover strange wonders: centaurs, talking beavers, fairies, and a fawn-like creature known as Tumnus, who befriends the children.

But Narnia is a land of contrasts as well. There is evil, in the person of the ambitious and calculating White Witch who battles to rule all of Narnia, and goodness and nobility, embodied in the powerful Lion King Aslan, who opposes her and her diabolic schemes. This story of love, faith, courage and giving, with its triumph of good over evil, is a profound celebration of life and inspiration, captivating young and old for decades.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the first in a seven-book series by C. S. Lewis called The Chronicles of Narnia. Clive Staples (C.S.) Lewis was born in 1898 in Belfast, Ireland. He was a professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Oxford. He wrote books on religion and philosophy, but is most famous for this remarkable series, that has captured the imagination of children and adults worldwide. Many will be familiar with the series through the recently released Walt Disney Productions and Walden Media films, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and Prince Caspian.

Monday, July 27, 2009

PKWproductions Brings Back Their Most Uniquely Powerful and Disturbing Combination of Music and Film with A Clockwork Orange

PKWproductions director P. Kellach Waddle and a host of Austin's finest classical musicians will present once again an extraordinary classical event with two live chamber concerts to accompany Stanley Kubrick’s controversial cult classic A Clockwork Orange as the “Music and a Movie” series continues on Sunday, August 2 at 8 p.m. at the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek.

Second only to this series' flagship event, Amadeus, PKWproductions has received more demand to repeat this event than any other in the series' nearly 4-year history since PKWproductions’ first "Music and A Movie" presentation of A Clockwork Orange in November 2008 met with a near-sold out audience.

Since the film’s teenage miscreant Alex DeLarge is famous for drinking drugged milk and listening to Beethoven, the entire program is dedicated to the iconic German composer. The pre-movie concert's theme is "Obscure Beethoven" with a presentation of three of Beethoven's lesser known works and in a special intermission concert, three of Austin's most prominent composers (P. Kellach Waddle, Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopchinski) will present three brand new pieces on themes of Beethoven.

Molièrewas appalled and distressed when he learned that although Louis XIV had enjoyed the court performance ofTartuffe on May 12, 1664 the "Sun King" had listened to pious advisers and had forbidden any further presentations of the play.

This great comic tale of religious hypocrisy was in trouble from the start. The dramatist had produced a farce in elegant verse featuring a "holy man" intent on seduction, theft and exploitation, an adroit manipulator of religious concepts and of religious language. The court advisers were probably scandalized at the playwright's witty undermining of religiosity and some of them may have felt directly targeted.

Molière'seloquent protests went unheeded and the revised version he presented publicly three years later was immediately shut down. Not until 1669, after a delay of five years, was Tartuffe performed, apparently with the King's permission. It became the most successful and most profitable of Molière's plays.

Charles P. Stites serves as something of a Molièrefor the City Theatre's production of Tartuffe. He drafted this text, directed it and stars as Tartuffe.

Manning's short piece gives us Dani Miller as "Pye, the Man with No Memory," and Manning himself as "Que, The Man Who Reminds Him."Imagine Estragon and Vladimir, respectively, except that instead of waiting for Godot, they're trying to construct a story for themselves. Author Manning awards himself the smarter of the two roles, in which he impatiently corrects and cues Pye while cadging cigarettes from him.

They eventually concoct lightweight fantasies, enlivened by the appearance of Sally Ziegler, Ariel-like, as "the beautiful girl" and "the Spanish princess," and by Phillip Kreyche as "the last man of high moral character." Our two tramps wind up paddling an invisible canoe up the center aisle, finishing their dialogue behind us, and after a pause the action begins for the two-act production.

In the Q&A afterward an audience member confessed to being confused by the fact that the company made no explicit demarcation between the two pieces. The casts overlapped, but each piece was announced separately in the program.

Kreyche's two-act Love Me is triply impressive. He dug deep into German literary history to find the source documents, including especially an eerie quasi-autobiography by the Viennese painter Oskar Kokoschka describing the artist's self-destructive infatuation with Alma Mahler, wife of the composer. He wrote a piece that is starkly expressionistic in style, using incidents from Kokoschka's life and portraying them with a mixture of narrative and mad illusion. And he played the principal character, Kokoschka, with stage presence, palpable emotion, and style.

Frances Ya–Chu Cowhig, a graduate of the James A. Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas at Austin, has won the 2009 Keene Prize for Literature for her play titled "Lidless," a poetic treatment of the issue of torture at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Keene Prize is one of the world's largest student literary prizes. Cowhig will receive $50,000 and an additional $50,000 will be divided among three finalists.Cowhig's play was chosen out of 58 submissions in drama, poetry and fiction.

In the play, a former Guantanamo detainee dying of liver disease journeys to the home of his female interrogator to demand reparation for the damage she wreaked on his body and soul. It recreates the traumatic experience of interrogation and moves toward reconciliation between its protagonists.[. . . .]

In addition to the Keene Prize "Lidless" has been selected by playwright Sir David Hare as the winner of the 2009 Yale Emerging Playwrights Prize.

The play was produced at the university's Department of Theatre and Dance Lab Theatre as part of the annual production, UT New Theatre (UTNT), last spring and will be given staged readings at Houston's Alley Theatre, Ojai Playwrights Conference and Yale Repertory Theatre. It will be published by Yale University Press.

[See continuation for rest of UT press release]

From website of D.C. Horn Foundation

“Lidless” centers on the reunion of a male Guantánamo Bay detainee and his former female Army interrogator. Fifteen years after his release, the prisoner revisits his captor and demands half her liver as recompense for the physical and psychological wounds inflicted during their interrogations.

Despite the political backdrop, the playwright contends the play centers on emotions. “It’s really a play about the senses — how visual and sensory experiences inform the moral and political issues,” Cowhig said. “There’s messy biological stuff. In a sense, I’m taking a political thing and putting a mirror of magical realism over it. No one wants to see a play that should be an op-ed piece.”

Ms. Cowhig is a graduate of The International School of Beijing, Brown University, where she studied play writing with Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel, and has spent the last three years in Austin Texas as a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers doing a multi-genre MFA program.

Friday, July 24, 2009

The Tempestby William ShakespeareAdapted for young audiences by Judy Matetzschk-CampbellAugust 7-11thPresented at The Dougherty Arts Center If you and your children enjoyed Pollyanna's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, you will not want to miss our young people's version of The Tempest. This 50-minute version of the classic tale of mistaken identities, shipwrecks, and deserted islands make a wonderful introduction to Shakespeare's language, characters, and stories.

Best for children ages 6-11.Friday, August 7 at 9:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.Saturday, August 8 at 11:00 and 2:00 p.m.Sunday, August 9 at 2:00 p.m.Monday, August 10 at 9:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.Tuesday, August 11 at 9:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.

TheatreTickets at $6.25 for children under 12, $7.25 for student age 12 and older, ACOT members and Seniors, and $8.25 for adultsGROUP RATES FOR SCHOOLS GROUPS ranging from $3.00-$5.00 are available depending on the total number of tickets reserved.Financial Aid is available based on financial need.Call for Reservations and Information: 743-7966

The Calamity Gulch trilogy is completed with this new melodrama-farce. Faced with losing the Last Chance Inn once again, Ma and Pa Culpepper turn to glamorous Sahara Hartburn. Sahara pays off their loan with money from a "well-heeled admirer" and promptly takes over the inn. Transformed into the Hartburn Hotel, the place becomes a residence for young ladies with a "no men allowed upstairs" policy.

Sahara schemes to find a scandal that will give her new venture some publicity, and finds it when the new schoolteacher, Polly Sincere, is paid a visit by her dapper and devoted boyfriend, Jasper Jones - in her room! To escape, Jasper dresses as a girl and poses as "Jasmine Sincere," Polly's sister. Complications arise when a visiting sheriff falls for "Jasmine" and "her" sudden disappearance leads Sahara to accuse Polly of murder! An attempt to clear Polly's name, an outrageous chase, and the search for a bank robber all conspire to bring the play to a surprising - and side-splitting - conclusion.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Received directly from the Austin Circle of Theatre (ACOT), for dissemination:

The "A"-Team

Dear Austin Theatre Companies and Arts Enthusiasts,

ACoT is about to launch a unique program that not only will help fill seats in your house on opening weekend, but will provide an added stream of positive reviews to draw traffic both to your show, and your website.

This program is called the A-Team.

The "A"-Team will be made up of local arts enthusiasts who will be given tickets to attend events covering all disciplines of art and culture in Austin found on NowPlayingAustin.com. These folks will then report back on the shows they have seen by writing reviews on NowPlayingAustin.com. There will also be monthly happy hours in which The "A"-Team can network and discuss the different events they've attended throughout the month.

How can you help?

THEATRES

Please let me know if you would be interested in having these A-team members attend your show! If you agree to participate, I will send an email weekly to organizations that have a show opening. You will tell me how many tickets you are willing to donate. One ticket will be given to each A-team member. ( Hopefully they will bring a friend.) Feel free to donate as many or as few tickets as you can afford.

You will be notified with the information of the A-team member so that you can add that person to your database.

ARTS FOLK

Wanna be on the A-Team? All you need to do is join ACoT as an individual member at a reduced rate ( 36 instead of 48) and you are on a roll! The free tix will pay for the membership fees in no time.

Please let me know if you are interested in joining us to help promote the "A-team" and the arts in Austin.

Received directly and from Gaslight Baker website:Peril at the High Seas...or...Let's get togetherand do LaunchBy: Billy St. JohnDirected by: Gail HellumsAll aboard the H.M.S. Majestic for a riotous adventure in this full length melodrama set in the Roaring Twenties! Little does our heroine, the heiress Merry Ann Sweet, know that she is the intended victim of the villainous Snively Swine's kidnapping plot. With his partner, the slinky and exotic Aracnia Webb, Swine disguises himself as Sir Reginald Rottentot, a British nobleman, in order to gain the confidence of Merry and her flapper friends, Mitzi, Ritzy and Ditzy. But Merry falls for the handsome waiter, Cary De Mille. Poor Cary—he loves Merry, too, but ship's policy says he can't get involved with a passenger.

Must these two ships pass in the night? Not if Merry's flapper friends can help it! Together, they transform Merry from a shy young lady into a red-hot jazz baby. Meanwhile, Swine launches his kidnap scheme. It's sink or swim for Cary. Can he save Merry and stay out of Aracnia's clutches?

It's up to the passengers—movie star Mary Pickaxe, gossip columnist Hedda Hooper, detective Willy Ketchum and more—to help Cary put the damper on Swine. Your cast and audience will go overboard in their enthusiasm for this rollicking production!

July 17 - August 1 at 8:00 PM. House will open at 7:30.July 25 Will also feature a matinee performance starting at 2:00 PM.

On-line tickets only are available for standard $12 ticket...any special promotions, group rates, senior / student prices, etc...will have to be purchased in person at the box office. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Mention Austin theater and most people will think of the venues and troupes that call downtown home or who have transformed East Austin warehouses into experimental venues.

But there are many other theaters on the greater Austin landscape. And in a way, they are the vestiges of tradition. For decades, small regional cities in America sported their own community theater troupes or built venues to house traveling shows. They were the cultural lifeblood of many a community providing the only live entertainment available.

Though our region's suburban sprawl might blur the line between where the metropolis ends and where neighboring small towns begin, the tradition of community theaters is alive and well in Central Texas. In some towns, theater enthusiasts have banded together to form busy troupes. And forward-thinking patrons have rescued historic buildings - including many historic theaters - from destruction and lovingly restored them.

Like it or not, tourist attractions are part of this city, too. But do they deserve the bad rap they get from grizzled locals? In Tourist Trap, Decider takes an ongoing, objective look at the cold, hard facts of establishments that largely exist to draw in transients. In this edition, we sit in on the vaudevillian antics of Sixth Street comedy institution Esther's Follies.

Fodor's says: "There's really one place in downtown Austin known for its rip-roaring comedy shows. Esther's has kept Austin rolling with laughter for more than 25 years. Situated in the heart of the entertaining Sixth Street District, it's the perfect place to take in an evening of satire and parody."

Decider says: The regular performers at The Hideout Theatre and The Velveeta Room might take umbrage with Fodor's assessment, but it's true that when Esther's Pool opened in 1977, it was downtown's only comedy destination. Even as the whole of east Sixth Street became a place to get a laugh at the expense of others (something Esther's gleefully exploits with its backstage window to all the debauched revelry), the theater and its vaudeville-inspired revues have retained their singularity and profitability, regularly packing the house at $20 per ticket. More than anything, Esther's Follies survives on enthusiasm, an earnest "let's put on a show" spirit that makes the broad humor of its revues hard to hate, even after the second punchline about sagging pants.

This is information about our Acting Company, and the auditions we are holding this month and next. Anyone wishing to audition, please contact me at 979-574-7090, or email me at entertainment@sherwoodforestfaire.com.

Our next audition, on July 26th, will work somewhat like a job interview. You need to sign up for your own 30 min. time slot between 10:30am and 6pm, where we will ask you some questions, ask you to read some things, and ask you to improvise some things. If you can make it to this audition, it is best if you can come back for our August auditions, but that is not required.

This audition will be held in a private room at Rounders Pizzeria on West 6th Street between Lamar and Mopac on the South side of the street.1203 W 6th StAustin, TX 78703-5208(512) 477-0404www.rounderspizzeria.com

The auditions on August 15th, 10am- 8pm, and August 16th, 10am- 3:30pm will be held at the Sri Atmananda Memorial School on Red River in Austin. Here is their website: www.samschool.org/

4100 Red River StAustin, TX 78751-4331(512) 451-7044

I would like everyone wishing to attend those auditions to sign up for a three-hour block, instead of 20-25 minutes. That way we can ask you to interact with/and read with other actors. You may attend both Saturday and Sunday, but that will not be required. Please email me any references such as headshots and resumes before your audition(s), or else bring them with you. Youtube links are good too, if you have them. These things are not required either--- but they wouldn't hurt.